ten

Wren, mindful of having asked a favor, convinced Death to let her call Cameron and give him the convenience store robbery story. He was as delighted with it as she’d thought he would be. “This is awesome! ‘Mustard-Weilding East Bledsoe Ferry Resident Thwarts Armed Robber!’ That’s a front-page headline right there. Go over the description of the robber for me again.”

Wren glanced at Death to see if he wanted to take that question, but he’d nodded off. She switched off the speaker and took the phone into the kitchen so as not to awaken him. “Police are looking for a Hispanic male, slight build, pencil mustache, mid- to late-forties, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. He’s driving a late-90s model Oldsmobile Cutlass, tan or light brown, and he has mustard all over his face.” She giggled as she said it and Cameron laughed.

“Okay,” she conceded, “so he’s probably washed that off by now.”

“Can I get a closing quotation from the Colonel?”

“The Colonel? Oh, Lord! Colonel Mustard!” She slapped a hand over her own mouth to keep from waking Death. All at once her laughter morphed into tears and suddenly she was sobbing into the phone. Cameron didn’t speak but waited her out. “That man was shooting at him. He tried to kill him, Cam! He could’ve died this morning!”

“I know, sweetie. Where is he? I thought he was there with you.”

“He’s in the living room. I’m in the kitchen. He fell asleep. He hasn’t been sleeping well since we found out about the thing with Randy’s badge. This fight this morning just took everything out of him. Poor thing! He didn’t even get his coffee and donuts!”

“You could make him some.”

“I don’t have anything to cook with. I’d have to go to the grocery store. I guess I could—I probably should. I know the way now. I just hate to leave him alone.”

“Will it take you long? Is it very far away?”

“No, there’s a little store a couple of miles from here.”

“He’ll be fine. You could make him some spudnuts. And maybe a nice hazelnut latte to go with them.”

Wren laughed again, less hysterical now that the first storm of emotion had passed. “He’s a Marine, Cam. He takes his coffee black and strong enough to double as metal polish.”

“Blech. Well, to each his own, I guess. Listen, I haven’t had much chance yet to look into the Greys. It’s Jubilee Days this weekend and I had to cover the turtle races. I did find out that Andrew Grey is loaded. After Prohibition shut down the brewery, the family switched their focus to medicinal liquor they made at another location. From there, they went into pharmaceuticals. Andrew’s worth billions. He had a stroke fourteen months ago. There was a big stink at the time because one of his ex-wives tried to get a court order to force his current wife to allow her access to him. It dragged on for several months before they eventually settled the matter out of court. There hasn’t been anything in the news about him since. I’ll go further back and see what else I can find after the weekend.”

“Thanks! I appreciate it.”

“I appreciate this great story! I’d say give the Colonel a kiss from me, but that would probably weird him out. I guess, instead, I’ll just tell you to take care. Of both of you.”

_____

Wren and Madeline were two different women with different backgrounds and upbringings and outlooks on life. It wasn’t at all fair to compare and contrast them and yet, sometimes Death couldn’t help but do just that.

If the convenience store robbery had happened while he was married to Madeline, she would have gotten hysterical. It would have taken all his energy and focus to calm her down. She’d have blamed him for going into the store in the first place and she’d have been embarrassed by the police bringing him home and mortified by the publicity afterward. Wren had fussed over him. She’d settled him on the couch and brought him water and ibuprofen. She’d bragged about him to her hometown newspaper and when he’d fallen asleep, she’d braved the city traffic he knew she hated so she could shop for him.

He took another spudnut from the bowl on the table. Wren’s lightly glazed potato donuts were dark brown on the outside and creamy on the inside with a silken texture. She refilled his coffee and he studied her face. He could tell she’d been crying after he fell asleep, but she’d hidden the traces as best she could with powder and makeup and he didn’t call her on it. When Madeline abandoned him it had felt like the end of the world. Now it seemed the greatest blessing he’d ever received.

“We’re going to need clothes to wear down in the cave,” he said. “I didn’t bring anything suitable and I’m betting you didn’t either. We’ll need jeans and sweatshirts, the older the better. This is apt to be a messy expedition. We should probably hit the thrift shops and see what we can find this afternoon.”

“Oh. Okay.” Her gaze drifted past him toward the bedroom. He knew she was thinking of the boxes full of Randy’s clothes that were stacked in a corner, waiting to be delivered to charity. The idea of taking that step hurt his heart.

“Not today, okay?”

She glanced at him, caught his meaning, and nodded. “There’s no hurry. You don’t have to be the one to do it at all.”

“I know.” Death sipped his coffee. This had been his grandfather’s place, the head of the table. Grandpa had always seemed decisive and authoritative—the man who knew what needed to be done and how to do it. Sitting in his chair now, Death tried to assume that mantle of capability, but he just felt like a little boy wearing oversized shoes. “I’d like to talk to Sophie Depardieu again, too,” he decided. “I just—”

“You’re just not completely convinced that it was really Randy?”

“I am,” he said, “but … but there’s so much about this that doesn’t make sense. I know my brother’s gone. I’ve accepted that. I have. I don’t like it. I’m not happy with it. But that’s the way it is. Captain Cairn and the other firefighters saw his body. Sophie saw his body. They even matched his dental records. I should let it go.”

“But you never saw his body.” Wren’s voice was understanding and not patronizing. (Madeline would have been patronizing.) “You never even got to go to the funeral. Of course you’re having a hard time finding closure.”

“You know, I didn’t come here on purpose.” He read confusion in her eyes and tried to explain himself. “To St. Louis. After I was out of the Marines and out of the hospital. I knew I should come, visit my family’s graves, talk to my brother’s friends, make sure that everything was taken care of. But I didn’t. I deliberately stayed away. I made excuses. The drive was too long. I couldn’t spare the time. I couldn’t afford the gas money. And, yes, there was some truth to all those things. But under all that, the bigger truth was that I didn’t come back because it hurt so bad.”

Without a word, Wren rose. She circled the table and planted herself on his lap, laying her head on his shoulder and wrapping him in her arms. He returned the embrace, resting his cheek on her soft, red hair. “Wherever I was, for months, I was always conscious of where St. Louis was. It sat like a bruise on the eastern horizon and I didn’t dare look at the sunrise for fear of the pain.”

“We’ll go talk to Sophie again,” Wren said. “We’ll find out why he was wearing that badge. We can get a boat and go out on the river where they scattered his ashes. Have another service, if that’s what you need. We’ll do whatever we have to do and then, when it’s all over, you’ll come home with me and I’ll do everything in my power to keep you from ever being sad like this again.”

_____

The thrift shop Death took them to was enormous—it had a footprint bigger than the courthouse back home. Half an hour of digging through tables of footwear and racks of used clothing netted a pair of battered sneakers for Death and faded jeans and tattered sweatshirts for both of them. Wren, whose job might include tromping through barns and outbuildings at any time, had a pair of old, worn work boots in her truck.

“I’m washing this stuff before we wear it,” she informed him as they left, clothes stuffed into secondhand plastic bags.

“You know it’s already been washed, right? And we’re just going to get it dirty again.”

“I don’t care. I’m washing it anyway. With bleach. Especially those shoes.”

Death had called Sophie to set up an appointment before they left Randy’s house and, after they killed forty-five minutes at a fast-food joint, he drove them to the Medical Examiner’s building.

There were handicapped parking spaces available and Death had a handicapped tag buried way in the back of his glove box, but Wren didn’t say anything when he drove past and found an empty slot halfway across the lot. They met at the front of the Jeep and she put her arm around his waist, both offering herself as a crutch if necessary and anchoring herself to him. The city was so big, so crowded and so busy, that she felt at times as if she were drowning in it. She had an irrational fear of getting lost and never being found again.

The warm, humid morning had given way to a cloudy afternoon. East winds brought in cooler air and the scent of rain. Lazy thunder rumbled on the horizon. “Is it going to complicate our caving if it rains?”

Death screwed up his face in dismay. “It could, if it rains hard. Parts of the caves are probably flooded anyway. We’ll keep an eye on the weather. We might need to postpone it, but I’d like to at least get ready, so we can go as soon as it’s safe.” He held the glass door for her and they went into a small lobby. The young man at the reception desk looked up and his face lit up.

“Hey! It’s the walking dead guy again!”

“You’re hilarious,” Death said drily. “I think Ms. Depardieu is expecting us.”

The guy checked his computer. “Yup. You remember where her office is?”

“I think I can find it.”

“OK, you can go on back. She might be a few minutes late. She’s performing an autopsy, but she should be about finished.” He pushed a button to unlock the double doors and Death led Wren down the hall to Sophie’s office.

At her door, he paused. “We should probably wait out here.”

Wren tried the door, found it open, and led him inside. “I don’t think she’ll mind if we come in and sit down.” Death fidgeted and Wren looked around the office. “That’s a nice picture of Randy.”

“Yeah. She had a flat tire on the freeway and Randy and Rowdy stopped and changed it for her.”

They’d only been sitting there for a couple of minutes when Sophie Depardieu came in. Death and Wren rose to meet her. “The door was open,” Death began. “I hope you don’t mind …?”

She waved aside his concern, shook hands with Wren, and made a beeline for the coffee maker. The carafe was empty, so she started a pot, then circled her desk and sat down. Her hair was wet and she carried with her the scents of commercial disinfectant and blood and a hint of decay.

“Have you figured out what happened with Bogie’s badge and helmet?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t. Honestly, the more I find out, the less sense it all makes. That’s why I wanted to talk to you again. I know you positively identified his body—”

“We did, Death.” She reached across the surface of her desk to lay her hand over his. “I saw him myself. His captain saw him, his friends saw him, we matched his blood type and dental records.”

“I just wondered if there were anything else you could do. Could you run his DNA maybe?”

“From what?”

“I’m sorry. I thought,” Death floundered and Wren moved her chair closer to him, offering silent support. “I thought maybe you could check his DNA against mine. Just to be thorough, because of the mystery surrounding his death.”

“But where would we get his DNA?” Sophie asked gently.

“Don’t you keep blood and tissue samples when you do an autopsy?” She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking.

“In cases of murder or suspected murder, sure. In death by natural causes, no. Bogie died of an aortic aneurysm. That’s about as natural as it gets, barring death by old age.”

“But he was so young, and in such good condition—”

“And that makes it unusual, but hardly unheard of, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” He drooped a bit, disappointed.

“What if we could get some of his ashes?” Wren asked.

“They were scattered in the river,” Sophie said. “I went to the memorial.”

“But, maybe if we could find out what happened to the container they were kept in. There could still be trace amounts—”

“It wouldn’t do any good.” The assistant medical examiner’s voice was sympathetic, but definite. “You can’t get DNA from cremains.”

“Oh.”

“If you’d like to,” Sophie offered, “I can help you put in a request for the full autopsy report.”

“I wouldn’t like to,” Death said, “but I think I need to, if only to be thorough.”

“Of course. I’ve got a copy of the paperwork you’ll need to fill out. When the report comes in, I’ll go over it with you and answer any questions you may have.”

_____

It rained while they were in the Medical Examiner’s office, but only a little. The sky was still overcast, but it was a pale, milky cloud cover. The first wave of storm clouds had moved on across the river to Illinois and toward the distant Atlantic.

Dressed in their new old clothes and carrying a bulging, red backpack, Death led Wren across the wet grass of a small park. A deep gully passed through behind the playground, its walls covered in thick underbrush. At the bottom of the gully ran a small stream. A high chain-link fence across the top of the opposite side protected the back lot of a large factory built of dark red brick, unmarked by any company logo or indication of purpose.

“Randy actually found this entrance,” he told Wren. “I went in after him. If he’d gotten caught, I’d have been the one in trouble for not keeping an eye on him. I dragged him out kicking and screaming but then, about a week later when Grampa was on duty and Dad was out of town at a seminar, we grabbed a couple of flashlights and snuck back in.”

He hunted among the brush and weeds until he found what he was looking for. Half buried under collected soil and greenery, a narrow stone staircase was cut into the side of the steep slope. He made his way carefully down the stairs, mindful of the slippery grass underfoot and confident that Wren was following. For a fleeting second he imagined leading Madeline down into this dark, dirty hole and almost laughed aloud.

“When these caves were open and being used, there was all kinds of stuff down here. The Lemp family had a swimming pool and a private theater in their section of the cave and there were biergartens and ballrooms and even a section that was designated as an air raid shelter during the Second World War, when they thought mainland America might see enemy air strikes. All those things would have taken labor to maintain, and they wouldn’t have wanted the hired help using the same entrances and exits as the wealthy owners and paying customers. I figure this was a back door, an employee entrance for the waiters and bartenders and pool boys and whatnot.”

Three-quarters of the way down to the bottom of the gully, the steps ended on a natural ledge about five feet wide at its widest point. Death turned left and pulled aside a curtain of hanging vegetation. A dark opening led down into the earth. It was a little wider than a normal door and tall enough for Wren to walk through upright, though Death would have to duck. On both sides of the opening, empty bolt holes bled long, red stains against a backdrop of pink and white limestone.

“There used to be an iron gate across here,” Death said. “I imagine somebody probably stole it for scrap. It was rusted and broken down even back when we were here.”

He clicked on his flashlight and ducked inside, turning broad shoulders to pass through the narrow opening. Inside, the path dropped sharply. The passage was claustrophobia-inducing for the first ten yards, then opened out. They stood in a roughly octagonal room formed by a strange marriage of karst topography and old brickwork. The natural stone ceiling ten feet above showed scars where stalactites had been broken off and an intricately laid brick arch framed another doorway at the opposite side of the room. Through the doorway, a staircase led down into darkness deeper than the reach of his flashlight beam. These steps were carved into the rock, soft edged and beginning to wear down from the effects of age and erosion.

In the middle of the room, Death paused to shine his light back on Wren’s face, pale in the darkness below startlingly red hair. “Miss Morgan,” he said formally, “allow me to welcome you to Cherokee Caves.”